


When It Happens (I'm Gonna Be Holding On)

by PeopleCoveredInFish



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Depression, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roommates, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5778184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeopleCoveredInFish/pseuds/PeopleCoveredInFish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leorio falls for his irritatingly pretty roommate, but is Kurapika also interested in him? (Alternately: survivor’s guilt can really fuck you up. Who knew?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When It Happens (I'm Gonna Be Holding On)

> It's always around me, all this noise  
>  But not really as loud as the voice saying  
>  Let it happen, let it happen (It's gonna feel so good)  
>  Just let it happen, let it happen
> 
> \- Tame Impala, “Let it Happen”

His roommate is perched on the bottom bunk—even the fact that he will be forced to sleep in a bunk bed isn't enough at this point to pull Leorio out of his newfound daze—like a sort of elegant cat, eyes slanted into something like intelligence; small-boned yet primed for athleticism—Leorio may not have had much medical training as of yet, but he can tell when someone's in shape—and, most strikingly, with a fall of hair the color of ripened wheat cascading to his shoulders, set off by a single, delicate, deep-red earring.  

The boy looks to be shorter than he is, by what might amount to a foot, but Leorio's been tree-tall since he was about fourteen, so it's nothing he's not used to. He nevertheless lets the door hang open between them, too stunned to say anything, and it's his new roommate who breaks the silence between them with a sharp "Well? Are you coming in?"

His speech cuts into the vein of bossy and demanding, both of which make Leorio grit his teeth out of pure instinct. He steps fully into the room, bags hanging from both hands in their checkered glory, and stops when he finally registers the existence of the bunk bed, and the piles of books strewn around his roommate.

No way in hell is Leorio taking the top bed, not when sitting up would knock his head decidedly against the ceiling. He drops the bags on the floor next to the remaining dresser, the one that isn’t already piled high with what appears to be foreign-language dictionaries. "You don't seriously expect me to..."

The boy looks nonplussed, which irritates Leorio even more. "I don't see what the problem is. I arrived first, it's only natural that I would get first choice in sleeping arrangements."

"That's—" Leorio stutters. He has to stop himself from completing the sentence with 'completely unfair' because, well, it's not, really. What the boy said does make some sense, loathe though he is to admit it. He settles instead on something neutral. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Kurapika."

And then, because Kurapika doesn't return the question—which is edging over the line into pretty rude, Leorio thinks, and who raised him, anyway—Leorio goes ahead and introduces himself.

Kurapika runs his eyes over him, calculating, assessing. Then, he says, "You're irritating, and too loud. Tell me, why should I defer to you?"

Leorio can't quite help the squawk that escapes him, emanating from the back of his larynx. Kurapika winces just slightly, bright blue-gray eyes squinting up and softening his face in a way that a small part of Leorio, a treacherous part, is more than willing to call cute. He doesn't want to examine that part of him, hold it under the light that seeps through their narrow dorm windows, for fear of what he'll find. He has to be _reasonable_. He clears his throat. "Because I'm older."

Kurapika laughs. It’s a sound that reorients the planes of Leorio’s existence, pulling him into a new realm of musicality. Leorio would embarrass himself a thousand times to hear that sound again. "Well, I could've guessed _that_ ," says Kurapika, and the spell is broken.

Cute or not, that face is going to meet with Leorio’s fist any minute now. “Are you calling me an old man?”

His roommate remains visibly calm, pushing up his sleeves in his only deference to Leorio’s growing anger. “And if I am?”

Leorio briefly surveys their territory, boxy and just big enough for the two of them to sleep and move around a bit near the wardrobes. “You looking for a fight?”

Kurapika tilts his head. “That I would advise against.”

How could someone be that confident? Feeling himself slipping into something approximating a fighting stance, Leorio says, “Are you looking down on me?”

“I’m not. I’m simply pointing out that, as we have to live together, it would be unwise to engage in such an activity, particularly at the start of our cohabitation.”

The fight falls right out of Leorio at these words and, vaguely embarrassed, he shoves his hands into his pockets and slumps against the doorway. He considers Kurapika’s words. Were they to fight, he might have to request a new roommate. That would probably put him right in line to room with that fifth-year freshman that tried to poison him at orientation. He’d rather take his chances with Kurapika.

"So," Leorio tries, which earns him a delicately raised eyebrow, "what are we going to do about this...problem?"

He gestures roughly to the top bunk, noting with ill humor that Kurapika looks amused.

"I don't see any problem," says Kurapika, who continues unpacking what looks to Leorio to be upwards of one hundred books onto the bottom bunk bed.

Leorio bites down on the array of comebacks rising in the back of his throat in deference to keeping things peaceful.

The peace between them grows into a fragile thing over the subsequent weeks, balanced along the spines of the books that, in lieu of a bookcase, line the walls of their shared room in piles. There is no more talk of violence after that first conversation, though Leorio finds that his head is much more likely to be filled with such thoughts after he has, just as expected, bumped it on the ceiling while sitting up in bed for the seventeenth time.

They speak when necessary, and in order to maintain a veneer of politeness—Leorio reveals that he’s pre-med, and Kurapika is apparently planning a double major in dance and comparative literature that sounds nearly as challenging on its own terms.

Not that Leorio would ever admit that, of course. “So,” he says, tipping precariously back onto the rear two legs of his desk chair, strumming idly at his guitar,“you basically read novels all day, right? Maybe take some time to spin around the room? Doesn’t sound like much.”

Kurapika raises his head from the tome he’s currently ingesting, which is nearly bigger than he is. “That’s a gross oversimplification and you know it,” he says.

Leorio is about to shoot back when Kurapika continues, “All _you_ do every day is study biology, organic chemistry, and physics. I know what I’d rather be doing.”

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy doing that while I make enough money to pay off my college loans within my first year as an M.D.”

Kurapika frowns. “What makes you think I have student loans?”

“Who doesn’t,” Leorio laughs, and Kurapika settles back into reading his book, having deemed the conversation over.

It doesn’t take Leorio very long to notice that Kurapika is messy. That’s putting it mildly. Living with Kurapika is like living on a fault line. Leorio cleans with a vengeance, sorting the clothes that are crawling across the floor; organizing the piles of books that have somehow sneaked from Kurapika’s bed onto his dresser. For some reason, Kurapika takes offense to this. “Stick to your own side of the room, please,” he says, face still in its solemn beauty.

Leorio is sure that he was born just like this, tiny and sharp and far too serious. “But we sleep on the same side!”

The look Kurapika gives him could wilt sunflowers. “Okay, okay,” says Leorio, hands up, “I won’t touch your stuff.”

He wants to ask if it would really kill him to be a little neater, but Kurapika is still glowering in his direction, so he shuts his mouth and goes back to cleaning the windows on the far side of the room.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon when Leorio walks back to their dormitory and spots Kurapika loitering outside the side door, smoking a cigarette. He’s wearing skinny jeans and, oh god, a light pink crop top that showcases his toned stomach. Leorio thinks distantly that perhaps he should call the police.

“Those things will kill you,” he says in greeting, voice deepening into sincerity.

Kurapika inhales almost sharply this time, closing his eyes to savor the nicotine rush. His eyelids are lined with teal. “You think so?”

Leorio tries to ignore the hopeful undercurrent in that question and says, “Are all dancers idiots, or is it just you?”

“Are all pre-med students this invested in their roommate’s lifestyle choices?”

Kurapika exhales, sending a stream of smoke into Leorio’s face, and sure, Leorio’s coughing now and it smells awful but _man_ , what a visual.

“Whatever,” says Leorio, as neutrally as he can manage, waving his hand in front of his face to dispel the smoke, “do what you want.”

It’s meant to be vaguely dismissive, but Kurapika smiles at him like he’s said exactly the right thing, and taps the end of his cigarette against the rim of the outdoor ashtray.

And while something in Leorio attaches to that smile like a lamprey, he can’t help but be slightly troubled by the exchange.

His concerns only multiply with the growing hazard that is their untidy quarters, around which Kurapika has taken to parading in nothing but a small pair of dancer’s shorts, his hair gathered up in a short ponytail.

When Leorio sexiles Kurapika, it’s out of sheer frustration.

There’s no shortage of cute girls on campus—particularly for Leorio, who genuinely thinks every girl is cute—and a lot of them seem to have cultivated an appreciation for overly tall pre-med students, so he picks a pretty brunette, throws a sock on the doorknob to alert Kurapika to stay away, and ends the evening decidedly more fulfilled than he had been at the start.

Kurapika hasn’t returned by the time Leorio wakes up the next afternoon. The stacks of books nested into the sides of the bottom bunk lie undisturbed. While objectively he knows he probably shouldn’t be worried, he sets off for the library almost as soon as he puts pants on.

He hasn’t run into Kurapika at the library in the past, but he can’t think of another place in which his roommate might have taken refuge over the last twelve hours. The thing is, as far as he can tell, Kurapika doesn’t have friends. He takes a minute to think about this, walking past the chemistry tower and waving to a couple of his classmates. Is the guy just that busy? It’s true that whenever Leorio sees him, he’s completely immersed in a book. Or perhaps he’s just shy, or bad with meeting people. His own first encounter with Kurapika hadn’t gone so smoothly, after all.

When he enters the library, it’s overflowing with students lining up to print, waiting for computers, and standing on the checkout line. Even so, he spots Kurapika almost immediately, on the far side of the room, curled up in an armchair with three books balanced on his knees. His bangs are pulled back with a cloth headband woven in blue and gold, and when he sees Leorio, his eyes grow momentarily wide before he drops his gaze back to his books.

Never one to accede to codes of decorum and tact, Leorio barks, “Oi! Kurapika!”

Kurapika closes his eyes, eyebrows cinched together, and sighs. “This is a library, Leorio.”

“I’m aware,” he replies, ignoring the growing numbers of students staring in their direction. He plops down on the footrest right next to Kurapika, legs sticking out at jaunty angles. “How’s it going?”

“Fine.” Kurapika stares at him.

“Are you?”

Silence.

“So, have you been here since…you know,” Leorio asks, and Kurapika’s features shift into coldness.

“My well-being certainly wasn’t on your mind last night.”

Leorio can feel his face heating up. “I just wanted to check—”

“Check up on me? I didn’t realize you cared,” Kurapika says, with a calm that slides over the insides of Leorio’s stomach like cold water.

Leorio stands. “Look, I wasn’t thinking, ok?”

“Is that really so unusual for you?” He sighs, again; shrugs. “I saw her leave this morning. Honestly, I don’t care that you’re straight, but do you have to be so _obvious_ about it?”

Leorio can hear his own blood streaming through his veins. Kurapika is looking at him with a nigh feverish intensity, pushing his bright-mad spurt back down like extra clothes into an overflowing suitcase, and it’s this more than anything else that opens the dam behind Leorio’s own anger.

“I’m bisexual, alright?” he confesses, on the verge of yelling, “There’s nothing straight about me.”

Now students are definitely looking at them. Kurapika’s mouth has opened just slightly, and if this were any other moment, Leorio would be happy to have knocked him off his game. “Leorio,” says Kurapika, “I’m—”

It is at this precise moment that the assistant librarian chooses to eject them from the premises, citing disruptive behavior. “My apologies,” Kurapika tells her, “we were just leaving.”

And Kurapika places his three books on the nearest desk and walks towards the exit, Leorio following in something like a daze, watching Kurapika emerge into the afternoon light like a half-thought daydream. They walk in silence, passing the library lawn, where students are clustered in small groups, enjoying the seasonal warmth. They’re just walking past a small grotto when—

“Do you want to sit down and just talk for a little bit,” asks Leorio.

“It was wrong of me to assume,” says Kurapika, at the same time, and then “Oh. Alright.”

There’s a small seating area carved out under the shade of some trees, and Leorio sits on a bench adjacent to a well-maintained water garden. After a moment of hesitation, Kurapika joins him, sitting a respectful distance apart on the same bench. “How’s your semester going,” asks Leorio.

“How is my _semester_ going,” Kurapika repeats, almost incredulously.

“Ah, you’re not much for small talk. Fair enough.”

Kurapika looks at him for a moment, as if trying to gauge the situation. “No, it’s fine. Forgive me. My semester has been going well.”

“Good, good,” says Leorio, which launches them both into silence.

“I’m sorry,” says Kurapika, “it was really none of my business.”

Leorio waves his hands. “I don’t mind talking about it.”

“I should never have brought it up.”

They don’t look at each other for several moments.

“Leorio,” says Kurapika, and Leorio tears his gaze away from the koi pond, “may I ask you a personal question?”

“Shoot.”

“How was it obvious to you that I’m a scholarship student?”

Leorio blinks. “What?”

“Weeks ago. You said that I’d be stuck trying to pay off my loans while your chosen career would enable you to be debt-free.”

“Did I say that?”

Kurapika crosses his arms. “You did.”

“Well, I didn’t mean…” Leorio tries, before deciding on a different tack, “we can recognize our own kind, right?”

The birds in the trees above them sing into the ensuing silence. Kurapika is still. Leorio takes a breath, and continues, “I’m dirt poor. I come from nothing, okay? Everything I have is aspirational, including this suit right here.”

He gestures at himself, before adding, “My best friend died when we were fifteen. It was an easily treatable ailment, but we didn’t have the money for a doctor. I decided right then and there to train as an M.D., and offer treatment to any child who needs it, free of charge.”

“Leorio—”

“It’s your earring.”

“What?”

“That’s how I marked you.”

Kurapika begins to fiddle with it self-consciously, twirling it between his fingertips. “Explain.”

“Well, first off, you only have the one, right? Meaning either you lost the other and couldn’t afford to replace it, or—”

“Or?”

“It has sentimental value and was either given to you, or belonged to someone else before you.”

“Are you saying people of means can’t be sentimental?”

“I’m saying that rich people tend to gift jewelry in complete sets.”

“Plenty of men wear single earrings.”

“Yeah, but yours is different. I can just tell.”

Kurapika smiles slightly, the corners of his mouth turning up just a few degrees. “It was my mother’s,” he says.

Leorio nods. “It’s beautiful.”

“She was killed, along with the rest of my family, in a home invasion. I was nine. I’ve been in the foster system ever since.”

The sound of the water passing through the bamboo spout behind them pulls the words out of Leorio. “I’m sorry.”

Kurapika nods. “I haven’t been the best roommate, have I?”

“Well, that is, you, uh,” stammers Leorio.

“I didn’t think so,” says Kurapika, “I’ll try to be better. Will that help?”

“I’m sorry about last night,” says Leorio.

“It’s okay,” is the response, “I was able to stay with someone.”

So he _does_ have friends. Either that, or he was _also_ —

“Want to grab dinner?”

Leorio winces. “Honestly, I’m behind on my meal plan—had to get the cheapest one, you know? I’m not sure if I can make it through the semester without eventually having to live on instant ramen.”

“I meant at the food co-op.”

“The…the what?”

A sudden breeze sends Kurapika’s hair flying over his eyes, and he reaches behind him to pull it into a low ponytail, headband still in place. “We pool our resources and cook meals together a few times a week. Saves a lot of money.”

Leorio considers the proposal for a moment. There’s certainly something appealing about the idea, something that reaches beyond the simple prospect of hoarding what little cash he has left. “Sure,” he says, and tries to lighten the commitment with a shrug.

When they arrive at the co-op, which is housed in a squat little house on the west end of the campus, they’re greeted by a short woman with protruding front teeth. “Kurapika!"

It might be the first time Leorio has seen him smile with genuine pleasure and not out of some sort of ulterior motive. “Melody.”

“Who’s your friend?”

Leorio is about to correct the misunderstanding with a clear statement that underlines the fact of their being no more than roommates when Kurapika introduces him without so much as a second thought. “Lovely to meet you, Leorio,” says Melody, and Leorio mumbles something along those same lines, thoughts still tangled with the nature of his and Kurapika’s relationship.

“We’re making lasagna,” says Melody, leading the way back into the kitchen, which stands small and cramped and hot in the back of the house.

Leorio is introduced to Squala, Basho, and Baise, the last of which stares at him enticingly over her cutting board and chopped garlic. “Baise, don’t,” says Kurapika.

She looks askance. “What did I do?”

“It’s not what you did,” says Basho, “it’s what you’re _planning_. Don’t let her kiss you, Leorio.”

Melody hands Leorio a couple of overly ripe tomatoes and indicates the general area of the sink. “Um, right,” says Leorio, “you want these diced?”

Basho is in the middle of telling him about Baise’s supposedly irresistible charms—her ability to entice any man to do her bidding has its roots, as far as Leorio can tell, in blackmail, but the explanation is so convoluted as to render it virtually meaningless. Of course, that could just be because he’s been staring at Kurapika for the past five minutes, which has resulted in his having scrubbed off most of the skin from the tomato he’s been charged with washing. Alternately, it could be because Basho is an aspiring poet, and is, according to Squala, apt to transform even the simplest of statements into elaborate labyrinths of verse.

But really, it’s probably Kurapika’s fault.

Kurapika is laughing at something Melody has said, the two of them lining a pan with strips of lasagna noodles they’ve just drained. Leorio almost envies that casual closeness the two seem to have, based in all probability on mutual trust and respect and everything else that Leorio seems to have failed to cultivate in his own relationship with Kurapika. And yet, Kurapika hadn’t denied that they were friends.

“Relax,” Leorio hisses to the second tomato to meet his paring knife, seedy guts dripping down his fingers.

Baise shoots him a wink from where she’s chopping spinach, and she must pick up on the dull terror lying flat in Leorio’s eyes because she says, “don’t worry. I know it’s not me you’re interested in.”

Leorio looks around wildly, trying to determine if anyone else had heard, but Kurapika and the others are occupied in lavishing attention on the German Shepherd that has appeared, without explanation, next to the refrigerator. “Keep your voice down,” he hisses, brandishing the knife between fingers slippery with tomato juice.

The dog, as it emerges at dinner, is Squala’s, and apparently there are more where that one came from. While Leorio likes dogs, he’s rather distracted by the intermittent—accidental? —brush of Kurapika’s knee against his under the table. Kurapika won’t look at him directly; he’s hyper-focused on eating his portion of lasagna and listening to whatever Basho is saying about rhyme schemes.

Afterwards, Leorio is washing a stack of plates when he spots Kurapika and Melody whispering together in the corner. There are secrets to be kept between friends, he supposes, and the way they take turns looking furtively in his direction probably has something to do with that.

Melody shakes his hand when they leave, and tells him she hopes to see him again soon. “That was nice,” he tells Kurapika, and it was, the niceness settling between them like new skins, and then that night they sit on Kurapika’s bed to watch a movie, and Kurapika falls asleep on Leorio’s shoulder.

The next few weeks are alight with little things—bobby pins strewn across Leorio’s desk like breadcrumbs (Kurapika, while having improved tremendously in the realm of keeping his clothes and books quarantined to his own dresser, apparently cannot resist the allure of scattering his smaller possessions onto the room’s every surface), the brush of Kurapika’s hand across his as they both reach for the doorknob.

The scent of Leorio’s own shampoo when the breeze from the circular fan catches Kurapika’s hair.

“I ran out,” Kurapika tells him, casually, seemingly completely unaware of the havoc this little trick is playing on Leorio’s senses.

“You ran out,” Leorio repeats.

They’re mirrored in musk, the heady tones of the shampoo circling the room and deriving their potency from warm bodies. “Like I’d use this stuff because I wanted to,” mutters Kurapika, “what’s the fragrance, fragile masculinity?”

He flips his hair behind his shoulder and returns to diagramming a sequence of choreography before Leorio has a chance to respond.

That Monday afternoon finds Leorio sprawled out on the top bunk for some personal time while Kurapika’s in class. And he’s not even thinking about Kurapika, really he’s not, hand snaking under his pants and boxers just as the key rattles in the door.

Swearing, he snatches his hand away and manages to zip up mere moments before Kurapika walks in. “I was just about to take a nap,” Leorio tells him, head angled so he can peer at Kurapika from between the wooden slats of his bunk.

“We got out early,” says Kurapika, dropping a stack of books on his desk, “you’re wearing your clothes?”

Leorio stares. “What?”

“Never mind, Leorio. Do what you want.”

Leorio recalls using those same words with Kurapika, in exasperation, and wonders whether his roommate has figured out what he’s really been up to. The thought is enough to make him want to sit up hard enough to knock himself unconscious against the ceiling, and double so for what happens next.

Kurapika takes off his shirt, steps out of his jeans to reveal dance shorts and tights, and immediately sinks into a split.

Leorio bites back the groan of frustration crawling up his throat when he realizes that he’s in very much the same predicament as he was before Kurapika so rudely interrupted him. “Ah, Kurapika…what are you doing?”

“Stretching,” is the response he gets, slightly muffled from where Kurapika is bent over at the waist, lying flat across his extended leg.

Things only get worse when Kurapika stands up and lifts his leg clear over his head, holding it in place by the ankle. “Can’t you do that somewhere else?”

Kurapika lets his leg down and crosses his arms. “What?”

“I mean it,” says Leorio, “scram.”

Kurapika’s eyes go wide for a moment. “Fine,” he snaps, “if it bothers you so much.”

“It’s _infuriating_ ,” says Leorio, sincerely, drawing a line through the air with his fingers for emphasis.

Kurapika pulls his shirt and jeans on again and storms out, the door shuddering shut behind him. His absence works at clearing the curtain of sexually frustrated fog from Leorio’s senses.

He returns to his prior task with an unprecedented single-mindedness.

Leorio is just about to leave the room the next day when he gets the text. Of course Kurapika had forgotten his wallet and keycard. Leorio grabs the missing items off of Kurapika’s bed, where they were nestled in between the _Norton Anthology of Critical Theory_ and _He Who Searches_ ; flips open the wallet almost casually. Kurapika is smiling in his ID photo, though it’s a little more akin to a wince, his hair tucked just behind his ear to better highlight the earring.

By the time Leorio reaches the studio, Kurapika is already in class. Leorio can see him through the glass that he assumes is a one-way mirror, warming up at the barre, replicating the same stretch for which Leorio had kicked him out yesterday. How anyone can stand to look at him like this without turning red, Leorio has no idea.

“Oh man,” says a voice next to him, “you’ve really got it bad, pops.”

Leorio practically snaps his neck taking in the new presence by his side. It’s a boy, high-school aged, slouching with his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt, dance uniform a clean contrast to his shock of white-blond hair.

Biting down on his instinctive lecture about being respectful to your seniors, Leorio settles on the warmer greeting of, “Who the hell are you?”

“I do have to hand it to you,” the kid says smoothly, dodging the question, “he’s one of the best in the class. Good choice.”

Leorio isn’t sure how the boy even got within a half-meter of him without him noticing, but this he chalks up to being completely, hopelessly absorbed in observing Kurapika. “Is it recess or something? Go back to school.”

The boy laughs. “I go here. Well, in the afternoons, anyway. For ballet.”

Leorio looks him over more carefully. “You must be good,” he says.

Shrugging, the kid says, “Some people think so.”

They watch as Kurapika executes a flawless spin—Leorio wishes he knew the word for it, so that he might greater appreciate Kurapika’s physical fluency—at the barre, finishing with his arms curved overhead. “You in this class?”

“I’m already warmed up.”

Leorio traces the boy’s gaze to a small figure in the corner of the studio. Had Kurapika not been the sole focus of Leorio’s attention, he would surely have noticed this other dancer much earlier. Also appearing to be of high-school age, he follows the warm-up routine seamlessly, and the boy standing next to Leorio is completely fixated upon him.

“Forget about me,” says Leorio brightly, “it’s you who’s hopeless.”

“Shut up,” is the reply, saturated with equal degrees annoyance and acknowledgement that this is indeed the case. “How do you know Kurapika?”

“Ah, well,” says Leorio, “we’re roommates.”

The kid breaks into a grin. “Shit, man! You fucked up.”

Leorio looks around. “You probably shouldn’t be using words like that. Asshole.”

“Whatever, old man.”

“I’m nineteen!"

“And I’m Killua,” says the boy, throwing open the door to the studio, “nice chatting with you.”

“Wait!”

Blue eyes assess him from the doorway. Leorio tosses the wallet, and the boy named Killua catches it, easy as breathing. “Give that to Kurapika?”

A grin, and he’s gone, the door closing behind him in rapid silence.

His job done, Leorio nevertheless stays sentry at the window for some time, watching first as Killua hands off the wallet, fixing his eyes on Kurapika once again—and how natural it feels, watching him, his gaze pulled forth like the tide to the moon.

Kurapika looks directly at him.

It’s impossible, Leorio thinks, and he smiles anyway; this is a one-way mirror. Kurapika stands before him, all shoulder blades and lean dancer’s legs, and he smiles back.

Kurapika returns to their room early that evening, tights tracing his calves underneath his shorts, a buttercup yellow v-neck thrown over his regulation undershirt. The calculus textbook sandwiched between Leorio’s hands and his desk seems like his only anchor to a world outside of Kurapika, a world that he can traverse through the cut of his own calculation, a world that he _knows_ the same way he knows integrals, differentials. He isn’t sure he wants to stay in that world anymore.

“Thank you,” says Kurapika, “for earlier. I wouldn’t have been able to get back here, otherwise.”

Leorio shakes his head. “Not a problem.”

“Kurapika,” says Leorio, standing up, the name a half-formed question on his tongue.

A plea.

“Yes?”

Kurapika is moving towards him, into inextricability, a parallel question reaching through the word.

Leorio sits down again, steadiness slipping out from under him, and he says, again, “Kurapika.”

There’s a hand under his chin; Kurapika is looking down at him through his lashes, eyes catching the light to refract it, somehow, into the edges of red. “Yes.”

The first brush of their lips is soft, testing, chapped.

“This is probably a bad idea,” says Leorio, into the space carved out by their mouths.

Kurapika kisses him again; teases the gap between his lips with his tongue. “I really couldn’t care less.”

Leorio moves to stand, but before he can, Kurapika is straddling him in his chair, winding his arms around Leorio’s neck.

“Holy shit,” says Leorio.

He shifts his hands to Kurapika’s ass. It’s pert and firm. He squeezes. Kurapika exhales; it’s a sigh with the cadence of a moan, and Leorio kisses him through it, brushes his hair behind his ear.

Kurapika is pulling the v-neck up and over his head, catching the seams of the undershirt to remove that, too. Leorio is caught between wanting to take off his own shirt and kissing Kurapika all over his neck and chest. He settles on an amalgam of both, which results in a struggle until Kurapika grips him by the wrists before dragging the shirt over Leorio’s head himself.

“Do you know just how long I’ve been waiting,” says Kurapika, running his fingers through Leorio’s spiky hair as the latter fixates on the pulse point in his neck.

“Why didn’t,” says Leorio, half-wrecked and breathing heavily, “you do anything?”

“You’re kidding.”

Kurapika sits back; looks Leorio in the eye, continues, “I used any means necessary short of touching you, and what did you do? You kicked me out.”

“Oh my god,” says Leorio, “I’m an idiot.”

“Then we are in agreement.”

Leorio swats him across the nose, which Kurapika wrinkles obligingly in response. And they’re laughing into the next kiss; breath stolen and expelled in turns.

Kurapika shifts against him, and Leorio knows that his growing hardness is evident. He finds himself saying, “Maybe we should slow down.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re…we don’t have to do this if you’re not ready.”

Kurapika just stares at him. “Oh my god. You think I’m totally inexperienced, don’t you?”

“What? Oh, well, I…”

“Leorio,” Kurapika is holding his face between his hands, “I’m gay. I’ve fucked guys before. Stop worrying about me.”

Leorio feels his face growing warm. “And here I thought I was the crude one.”

Kurapika smiles. “I didn’t think anything else would get through that thick skull.”

He kisses Leorio thoroughly through his objections, running his hands up his chest, thumb flicking over a nipple. Leorio throws his head back, nigh overwhelmed, Kurapika has barely touched him; his likelihood of surviving this encounter with his pride intact is decreasing by the minute.

“So,” says Kurapika, after a particularly long and heated kiss, “want a taste of the bottom bunk?”

Kurapika is warm and bare on top of Leorio, their pants discarded on the floor near the bed. Any semblance of coherent thought is slipping out of Leorio’s mind and catching on the meeting edges of their bodies. He takes them together in his hand.

There it is again, the ember of light in Kurapika’s eyes that’s somehow shifted into redness. Kurapika, smoldering over him; Leorio takes his measure in every labored breath. Having grabbed a bottle of lube from the top drawer of his dresser, Leorio eases their movement against each other, his eyes closing of their own accord in response to the sensation sparking up his spine.

“Come on,” groans Kurapika, gripping Leorio by the biceps.

Leorio’s throat releases a garble of sounds that could generously be interpreted as “What?”

“Give me that,” Kurapika replies, snatching the bottle from where it had settled, next to his Spanish dictionary. Sitting up—the bottom of Leorio’s bed and Kurapika’s height having conspired to leave several inches between them, to Leorio’s envy—Kurapika slathers his fingers in lube and eases two into himself.

Leorio scrapes his jaw off his chest. “I can do that!”

Kurapika eyes him, playing at disdain but there’s a smile at the edges of his mouth. “I’ve got it.”

Watching Kurapika like this might be more taxing to his health than the double all-nighter he pulled last week studying for the physics midterm. He can see a light bloom of freckles on Kurapika’s cheekbones and a small web of vein under the skin of his closed eyelids. Kurapika moves back onto his fingers and lets out his breath in a hiss that skids deliciously across Leorio’s eardrums.

They’re kissing, Leorio’s world seeping into the slide of their tongues against each other, and Kurapika says, “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure?”

“I want to be able to feel you, for days,” says Kurapika, and Leorio, rolling on a condom, senses his own body temperature shooting up several degrees.

“How—” says Leorio, voice cracking into slivers, “uh, how d’you want it?”

Kurapika moves until he’s directly over him. “Like this.”

And slowly, slowly, he begins to sink down.

“Holy shit,” Leorio says, again, a whisper this time, awed and fervent.

What he registers first, of course, is heat, but it’s more than that—it’s the spatiotemporal dislocation of sinking into a hot tub in the middle of winter; vasocongestion taking effect and spreading through his system.

Kurapika—seeping into his every pore, pinning him with his stare—begins to move.

He sets a slow pace to start, grinding tortuously up and down, Leorio running his fingers up and down Kurapika’s sides only to settle on his hips, urging him on. Kurapika’s body drags against his like a match catching light, and Leorio doesn’t care if he slips into incineration.

Kurapika, his head thrown back, mouth slack and wanting, rides Leorio with seemingly no care for anything other than his own pleasure, and maybe it should make Leorio feel used but instead it releases something at the base of his sternum, something bright like the sky after the first flash of lightening; a shining curtain of blond hair.

Bright like the gasp Kurapika emits when Leorio bucks his hips, straining for the blessing that is letting go, the length of his body taut as the strings on a double bass. “Leorio,” says Kurapika, voice strained and splitting, “I’m…”

And Leorio encircles him with his hand again, working them both towards the edge of falling. Another gasp and Kurapika is gone, warmth spreading over Leorio’s hand and chest and it’s enough to send Leorio tumbling down, lips coarse with curses and the current of release.

Kurapika looks ready to collapse into his arms, heedless of the mess, but instead he just meets Leorio’s eyes, and Leorio could be wrong—often is, if some people are to be believed—but there’s something weighted in Kurapika’s eyes, now. The hint of red he had noticed before, whatever that was, is gone.

Kurapika climbs off of him. “This was…we should do this again, sometime.”

Leorio chuckles. “Yeah, that’s. That’s kind of the point, you know?”

“Leorio,” says Kurapika, steadily, “let’s not pretend that this was anything more than it was.”

“What?”

His mouth a thin line, Kurapika says, “Get out of my bed.”

The words slip under his rib cage, stinging and sharp. “What, really,” he tries to laugh. “Now?”

“I don’t make a habit of repeating myself.”

Leorio stares. “Uh, wow, okay.”

“Please,” adds Kurapika, and looks away.

It’s almost, Leorio thinks confusedly, like an apology.

Leorio stumbles out of the bottom bunk, and Kurapika pulls on his previously discarded clothes, smoothing them against his frame in the mirror on the back of the door. He twists his hair into a small bun, jabbing at it with a handful of bobby pins, and, after glaring rather severely at the bruises forming on his neck, steps out of the room, the door closing sharply behind him.

Wiping his hands and chest with a wad of tissues, Leorio aligns himself with each passing second on his desk clock. He tips into 9:07 PM, sun long gone. He wonders distractedly if the stars are out tonight.

Leorio pulls on a clean pair of boxers and a pair of old sweatpants, and sits down at his desk, opening his calculus textbook to the chapter on derivatives. Was it really just physical, then, between them? He thinks back to the taste of Kurapika’s inner thighs, the sweetness of him, and certainly can’t deny the intensity of their connection on that front.

And yet, he was sure that Kurapika had seen him through that one-way mirror.

That night, Leorio can’t sleep. It’s an excellent pretext for studying, and for taking his mind off of the way Kurapika had felt on him, around him. Kurapika stays out until midmorning, at which point Leorio pretends to be asleep. Pretending pulls him into a state of genuine sleep, and by the time he wakes, Kurapika is gone again.

He’s on his way to physics that afternoon when he spots Melody coming out of the performing arts center. Leorio instantly decides that now is not the time to be ashamed, and informs her of what has transpired between him and Kurapika. “And now I don’t know what to do,” he finishes, lamely.

“You shouldn’t be afraid to ask him, yourself,” advises Melody, “It might sound strange, but Kurapika appreciates it when people are direct with him.”

Leorio runs a hand through his hair in a rather affected new take on nervousness. “Why would that be strange?”

Melody laughs lightly. “Well, Kurapika is so secretive, isn’t he?”

“Has he mentioned me, at all?”

“You know I can’t really talk about that,” she reprimands, and Leorio slumps. She continues, “but he does seem fond of you.”

“Yeah?”

She smiles. “Talk to him.”

Leorio doesn’t mention how he has yet to even really _see_ Kurapika, let alone be presented with the opportunity to exchange words, because at that moment he realizes just how late he is for his physics class.

Slipping into the last row of the lecture hall, he texts Kurapika asking to meet at the library after class. While his phone indicates that his message has been read, the professor has reviewed three problem sets before Leorio gets an answer.

He hopes that Kurapika isn’t the type to end one-word responses with periods to demonstrate anger.

When he arrives at the library, Kurapika is already waiting for him by the reference desk, wearing a red top cut away at his collarbones, embellished with floral designs. The arch of his eyebrows betrays his irritation. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until tonight?”

“You’ve been avoiding me,” says Leorio, aiming for a direct hit.

“I could say the same for you.”

“Look,” says Leorio, “we need to talk about this.”

Kurapika turns toward the main exit. “I really don’t think we have anything to discuss.”

Leorio catches him by the elbow before he can walk away. Kurapika’s hair swishes in front of his face as he turns his head back, and it’s all Leorio can do to refrain from tucking it behind his ear. “That night, afterwards—why did you leave?”

Kurapika is silent for a moment, chewing his lower lip. “What were you expecting? Cuddling?”

“Well,” says Leorio, “kind of. Yeah.”

Kurapika looks almost disgusted by the idea, which isn’t exactly reassuring. “Listen, Leorio,” he sighs, crosses his arms, “I don’t do relationships. Okay? It was a very satisfying encounter and I wouldn’t say no to another like it in the future should you ask me. But it didn’t _mean_ anything,” and Leorio must look crestfallen, because he amends, “I’m sorry.”

Leorio knows he should leave it at that, walk away, but of course he says, “So that’s it, then?”

Kurapika narrows his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

Leorio can practically feel the ice crackling beneath his feet, but he presses on. “You get a free pass to treat me like shit because you ‘don’t do relationships’?”

“Leorio—”

“No, Kurapika, this is bullshit. If that was true, you’d have no reason to avoid me.”

“ _Were_ true,” Kurapika mutters.

“Huh?”

“If that _were_ true. Subjunctive.”

Leorio gives into the rage crawling up his spine. “What the hell is your fucking problem, you stuck-up prick?”

The library, already at a base level of silence, plunges a level deeper into quiet shock. Students look up from the solitude of their work to stare; Leorio stares back, defiantly, daring them to say anything.

Kurapika lights up like a fuse. “ _My_ problem? Of all the arrogant, self-serving—”

This time, the assistant librarian reprimands them in the harshest tones while throwing them out.

“Getting banned from the library wasn’t exactly on my bucket list, so thanks for that,” says Kurapika, walking slightly ahead of Leorio down the slope of lawn.

“Oh, anytime,” snaps Leorio.

They fume their way back to the dorms, Leorio sharp and stinging in his anger, Kurapika brooding in his. For the rest of the night, they only speak when absolutely necessary.

Leorio can’t explain why he’s standing outside Kurapika’s dance class the next day. He can’t be expecting a repeat of the moment when Kurapika met his eyes through the one-way mirror, but he’s found that even false expectations lean on the mantle of reality.

Killua finds him slumped over in a chair next to the open door. “Are you pouting?”

“Oh, it’s you,” says Leorio, who is certainly not pouting.

Continues Killua, “I don’t sense the same level of unresolved sexual tension in the air, which means you probably fucked, but you’re definitely both pouting so clearly you had different expectations, and now, no one is satisfied.”

“Oi, watch it!”

Killua grins. “Am I wrong?”

“That’s beside the point,” says Leorio, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“So you thought you’d ask your friendly local high school student for advice?”

“No. That’s not what this is,” he says, moving his hand between them.

“No? What is it, then?”

“We’re just making conversation,” Leorio says, steadily, “now, go to class.”

Behind the one-way mirror, Kurapika extends his leg behind him until it’s nearly perpendicular to the floor, arms held aloft in graceful arcs.

“He can never stop talking about you, you know,” says Killua, and there’s a smugness behind it, as though no one else could have possibly shared that information with Leorio, “oh, and he’s helping to organize the student council’s open mic night on Thursday. You look like the kind of guy who owns a guitar and only plays “Wonderwall.” Think about it.”

Leorio is about to ask him what there is to think about when Killua abruptly disappears into the studio with a jaunty wave. He looks to be smiling his way out of a lecture from the ballet master, while Kurapika looks on in disapproval. Thursday gives Leorio two days to prepare.

He checks the stream of his thoughts. There’s no reason for him to get involved in something like an open mic event, particularly if Kurapika is running it. The risk of complete embarrassment far outweighs any potential gain in his favor.

And yet, he remembers the feeling of Kurapika’s skin against his, the smell of his shampoo in Kurapika’s hair, and he knows—down to his cells, he knows—that he will do anything to woo Kurapika, even if it signals the destruction of his carefully cultivated cool-guy image.

The next two days, then, are laid out before him in resolute preparation, in liner notes and chord progressions and last-minute key changes. He barely remembers to eat, let alone go to class, scribbling lyrics in his chemistry notebook during Wednesday’s lab. While he had considered covering something from the radio, he decides ultimately that a cover isn’t a strong enough measure of devotion, choosing instead to write the song himself.

Fortunately, Kurapika is still avoiding him, which means he has the room to himself more hours than not, surrounded by crumpled drafts of sheet music and the hopeful echo of his own voice. He’s no musical prodigy, but he and Pietro had started a band before…well, when they were about fourteen. He’s relatively confident in his basic songwriting ability, while certain that whatever he composes isn’t going to be anything fantastic.

When it’s time to sign up for a performance slot, Leorio steps up to the student council’s desk, guitar nestled into its case at his side, and grins at the no-nonsense woman with thick glasses behind the counter. “You’re Kurapika’s…” she begins, and Leorio supplies “roommate” before things get too uncomfortable.

She pushes a form across the counter, and Leorio selects the last available slot so he can have an adequate amount of time to panic about making the biggest mistake of his life. The acts before his alternately stretch into endlessness or are over before he’s elected to really pay attention; he notices Kurapika sitting several rows away, hair in a short braid, profile cutting coolly into the air around him.

His name is announced, followed by a smattering of applause. Steeling himself, Leorio walks onto the center of the makeshift stage, in front of the microphone, guitar in hand. “I’m going to play something I wrote,” he says, and the speaker whines with feedback.

He steps back a bit. “It’s for Kurapika,” he says, words marching off his tongue almost of their own accord, “he knows why.”

Kurapika’s expression is unreadable, but he projects a level of intensity that Leorio hasn’t felt from him since their night together. Leorio meets Kurapika’s eyes and tries to smile, fingers strumming out the opening chord progression. The lyrics, when they come, are a bracing relief. He can feel the shift in the audience as they become attuned to the sound of his voice, which, while hardly professional, is pleasant and warm.

It’s a love song, sure, but it’s also a song about vulnerability. Leorio feels the stretch on the higher notes, vocal chords smoothing out into something soft, and when he sees Kurapika’s face, he’s glad he took the risk.

His eyes are closed, lips slightly parted. He looks like he’s immersed in the music, like he’s floating in it, body given out to the rhythms of Leorio’s fingers across the frets. And Leorio sings him into safety but also into newness, into the silk-soft promise of the present moment.

He can feel the energy of the room buzzing around him as he draws to a close, and his final chord is met with applause and whistles, people clapping a rather stunned-looking Kurapika on the back in what looks like congratulations. He can’t help but smile, and Kurapika, caught in the movements of the crowd, well.

Kurapika smiles back.

Leorio comes within speaking distance as the woman from student council with whom he had spoken pulls Kurapika into conversation. “And they hated each other so much, they decided to drop out and get married,” she is saying, “so now we’re out two council members. We could really use your help.”

Kurapika looks at Leorio. “You need two people? Let me get back to you.

And then it’s just the two of them, walking through the student union, Leorio offering to buy mozzarella sticks to share. They sequester themselves in an empty booth, sitting across from one another. “So,” says Kurapika.

“So,” says Leorio, between bites.

“You’ve made your point.”

Leorio scratches the back of his head. “Have I?”

“I suppose I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

Folding his hands together, heedless of the grease and crumbs, Leorio waits for Kurapika to continue. “Okay,” he says.

“When I said I don’t do relationships…I didn’t mean I have no desire for them.”

Even now, Kurapika is careful to not look directly at him, as though the admission demands a great cost. “I’m kind of really fucked up emotionally, and trust me, it’s not attractive or endearing. I didn’t want to burden you.”

“You’re not a burden, and anyway, that’s not up to you to decide,” says Leorio, after a moment.

Kurapika frowns slightly. “I swear, if this is your way of trying to save me from my issues, I really will kill you.”

“No,” says Leorio, waving his hands, “it’s just…ok, take this mozzarella stick.”

“Oh, no.”

“It’s like, it’s you, right?”

“…I’m not following.”

“Nicely breaded but kind of goopy on the inside.”

“Oh my god.” 

“And I love…this mozzarella stick. The whole damn thing. Got it?”

Leorio is willing to bet that Kurapika has never blushed before in his life, but now his cheeks are tinged with the slightest touch of pink. “You’re so embarrassing.”

Pointing his finger at Kurapika as though in accusation, Leorio says, “You like it.”

“I’m not admitting a thing.”

The mozzarella sticks demolished, they get up from the booth and start walking out through the student union towards the dormitories. Leorio’s hand is drawn to the proximity of Kurapika’s, which he is ultimately unable to resist. “I feel like I should be offended, somehow,” says Kurapika, whose entire hand is covered, glove-like, by Leorio’s.

“You like me,” crows Leorio.

“I like you better when you stop talking,” says Kurapika, and he stretches onto his tiptoes and pulls Leorio down by his tie.

The kiss holds tight to the weight of intimacy between them. Soft, unhurried, Leorio presses into the velvet of Kurapika’s mouth. He sifts his hand into Kurapika’s hair, heedless of his braid, and Kurapika wraps his arms around Leorio’s neck. Kurapika breaks away. “Do you want to join the student council?”

“You’d get the pleasure of seeing even more of me than usual,” says Leorio, thumb brushing across Kurapika’s cheekbone, “would you really be okay with that?”

“I don’t mind you so much,” says Kurapika.

“Really? I’m flattered.”

Hand in hand, they walk across the commons, jumped-up with the light of the stars.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank the squad for moral support on this one, especially for supplying some of the plot suggestions, and for sitting there patiently for like two months while I bounced ideas off of them like some sort of manic tennis ball. 
> 
> A note about the earring: I really have no idea if Kurapika wears one or two. I can never tell from the anime. Everything I wrote in that regard is pure conjecture/headcanon.
> 
> I really wanted this fic to explore a realistic depiction of someone who's been through as much as Kurapika has without the release valve that is being a hunter, while paralleling the intimacy issues he displays in canon. Hope I succeeded!
> 
> Possible (but probably inevitable) sequel: Kurapika comes to learn that the man responsible for destroying his family is a professor at their university. Can he and Leorio stay together through the upheaval that follows? 
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr, midorimashintarous, or on twitter @queerapika please I need more leopika in my life
> 
> Comments and kudos are sincerely appreciated!


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